Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Serene Hakim has been promoted to associate agent and
subrights manager at Ayesha Pande Literary.

Indigo Books & Music chief financial officer Hugues Simard is
leaving the company and evp and chief supply chain officer Craig Loudon will
take over as cfo on February 5.

ForthcomingTracy Chevalier's
next novel, A Single Thread (first called Winchester Cathedral when it was sold
in 2017), has been announced
for September 5, 2019 publication in the UK. Presumably Viking will follow
shortly with a US pub date.

Bookselling
The ABA announced that, for the first time, they will live-stream "several
author keynotes and featured talks" from Winter Institute in Albuquerque later this
month.

Pop-UpsPenguin Random House
has built a pop-up
library in lululemon's
HUB Seventeen community space at 114 Fifth Avenue. The collection of over 1,000
titles connects PRH books from across the list with "wellness-focused
readers, yoga enthusiasts and other mindful consumers." It's open through
the spring, and lululemon and Penguin Random House will host book and author
events in the space.

As you may recall,
last year we did a lot of work on our signature "deals" data stream
-- adding a number of new categories, revising our main deal reporting form,
and creating a new translation rights deal reporting form. Now, by popular
demand, we have posted an
extensive list of tips on filling on the new forms, as well as explaining
some of our policies and practices. Little section headers let you jump to deal
report tips (including how to report film/tv deals; translation
rights deal report tips (including how and where to note all the levels of
sub-agents and primary agents, and a caution to not report more than five deals
in a day); as well as some practices
and quirks that come up frequently in reader mail (how we can handle
everything from bestseller list credits to middle initials and character names
and more). We hope you find it helpful to have this posted all in one place!